Talk:Enjolras/@comment-30721698-20171023144606/@comment-108.5.152.32-20180215080724
I'd like to offer some insight from the views of someone who studies Political Science. You're miscontruing what exactly Republicanism was back then. Being a Republican had an extremely different meaning than it does today. I have read the book multiple times and their ideology does fall more to the left than the right in terms of social reform and the plights of the poor. Even though two of them came from rich families, they did look down upon the wealth disparity. On top of that, they all differed in political opinions, but agreed on anti-monarchism. Modern day Republicans are very much "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" types while generally speaking, Les Amis were more similar to "social justice warriors". Les Amis d'ABC is literally a play on abaisse, which means abased which in turn refers to the poor and downtrod. So to compare them to modern-day Republicans is a stretch and somewhat farcical, but to compare them to Democrats or Socialists would be the same in my belief (as in a stretch). You're also viewing it through the eyes of Republican versus Democrat which is an American concept and a relatively new idea in 1832. In this instance, a Republican is someone who believe in the establishment of a Republic, which would be a representative form of government. I'm sincerely curious if anybody has looked into the background of this novel before making their assumptions on both sides. Before people go running their mouths about what they believed in, they should really read about what was going on prior to the June Revolution of 1832. Louis-Phillipe was still pretty new to the king thing and a new upper class was emerging of bankers and industrialists. The poor were growing poorer, the cities experienced a large increase, there was an outbreak of cholera due to the lack of sanitation (partly due to a civil uprising prior to his acsension in which public toilets were destroyed and people literally just dumped their feces and urine in the streets), and there were stipulations to voting that kept the majority of French people from voting. For starters, you needed to be able to cough up more than 200 francs (and imagine how much that would be now) and certain professions were given the ability to vote (retired officers, doctors that had practiced for a long time, judges), but the general French population could not vote. That would include most of Les Amis. They also wanted the government to take action to provide what should have been neccessities (such as sanitation). They did have general agreements, however when it came down to it, they had differing political views. There is irony of what has been said in this thread. Far-lefist thought believes in the abolition of the state altogether... AKA the minimalization or elimination of a federal government period. I just want to point that out (for the record, I'm not that at all lol). A common misconception about socialist and communist thought. However, theory is different than practice. We can acertain these beliefs with Les Amis. 1. Dissolution of the monarchy 2. Voting Rights for all French (minus women for sure) 3. Improvement of living and working conditions 4. Representative democracy (Democratic Republic or plainly a Republic). They were still for a representative form of government which would not happen because the Second Empire succeeding the July Revolution of 1848. There are no specifications as to whether they would have been anti-federalist or federalist. I highly suggest you look into the Society of the Rights of Man since that is what the group is based off of. I can literally probably do an entire symposium on this lol, but I'll spare everyone. To sum it up, they're DEFINITELY not the equivalent of modern-day Republicans and they are not the equivalent of Socialists and Democrats. To say that is laughable.